Sorority Boys

Starring Barry Watson, Michael Rosenbaum and Harland Williams; Melissa Sagemiller, Heather Matarazzo
Screenplay by Joe Jarvis & Greg Coolidge
Directed by Wally Wolodarsky
website: www.sororityboys.com

IN SHORT: An incredibly crude and equally funny collegiate comedy. [Rated R for Crude Sexual Content, Nudity, Strong Language and some Drug Use. 97 minutes]

Ah, we know spring is in the air when we start sitting through the annual spate of dimbulbs in college movies. First out of the gate is Sorority Boys, in which three of those bulbs, Dave (Barry Watson), Adam (Michael Rosenbaum) and Doofer (Harland Williams), find themselves living in drag in a sorority house.

Now, here's where you get to find out how honest your local critics are -- especially if they're way outside the under 25 or 30 age target for this flick. If they report that those bulbs have blown their available cash partying and must resort to the deception to score the last free housing slots on campus in that sorority, they're reporting the story that is in the press notes. If they say that the bulbs' frat forced them to join a sorority, that's not the story which plays out on the big screen, either. So, if that's what they report, bust 'em. They didn't watch the flick and figured to blow it off like all similar dumb collegiate flicks.

And . . . yeah, we seriously considered blowing off Sorority Boys for all the same reasons. We didn't because Harland Williams -- a very funny guy who has made some incredibly bad movies -- is one of the stars. What we watched was a very crude and sometimes very funny dumb college flick. We sat with a real audience filled with the demographic target. They were laughing hysterically and we didn't feel like we were wasting our time.

Our heroes get booted from the party-hearty Kappa Omicron Kappa fraternity after all the cash set aside for the big blowout "KOK-tail Cruise" is stolen from the safe in their room. They suspect the still-waiting-for-his-boys-to-drop President of the House, Spence (Brad Beyer), the only other person with a key to the safe. To bust him, though, requires the retrieval of a secret videotape whose reason for existence would get its owner busted in fifty of the fifty United States.

Doing themselves up in drag to sneak back into the house during one of its nightly wild parties the trio get busted by the KOK "dog catchers" and are unceremoniously dumped at the doorstep of the neighboring sorority, Delta Omega Gamma. You figure it out. There, the feminist President Leah (Melissa Sagemiller) takes "the girls" in, furious at the callous chauvinists across the street. And... if they pledge the house, they get free room and board for a semester -- and a closet full of clothes for the extra sized girl.

Never intending to stay (and having no place to go since they've been booted out of KOK in and out of their dresses) Dave/Daisy, Adam/Adina and Doofer/Roberta fit in well with their fellow DOGs. These include the loudmouth Katie (Heather Matarazzo), the giant-sized tall Patty (Kathryn Stockwood) and a French pledge (Yvonne Scio) who must be seen to be believed.

There is no joke too crude or un-PC for this movie, whose overall supervision fell to ex-The Simpsons writer Wally Wolodarsky. If there was any buffing needed to soften the incredibly tasteless humor that would otherwise drown you, it probably comes from him. For everyone else, you get a couple of shower scenes; a little bit of not-exactly lesbianism; a couple of shots at feminists and even more at male jerks; at least one scene that (in a drama) would be the setup for date rape; a fair share of abuse of oversized "women"; an overenthusiastic virgin boy (Tony Denman) and a wee bit of chauvinistic humiliation on the morning after. We're not going to go near the rest of the sex jokes, or the drug jokes, just in case there are kidlets looking in.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Nine Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to Sorority Boys, he would have paid . . .

$5.00

A dateflick for the rest of the collegians. We were sure we had reached the burn out phase of the yearly exposure to these movies, but we guess we haven't.

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